Can someone please answer this for me....?

Question

why is it that the whites are called craker as an insult...no offense anybody but i dont think that craker is a bad word, i mean its something we eat......we could get into like a verbal fight and retaliate with some other food product (oh yeah you grape jelly sandwich) and people would just laugh....how did this name come about anybody know?

Answer 1

Sorry I have never heard of this.

I like your idea about using food though, perhaps we could use it for swearing instead of the dreadful language you hear on public transport.

The other day  I saw 2 very beautiful looking young girls on my bus, then they started to swear, now I am no innocent but suddenly their beauty just dissapeared and they sounded so very horrible and ugly.  I wanted to go up to them and say please do you have any idea what you sound like, but instead I just put on my i-pod and left them to it....

Would have been much nicer if they had used your words instead. Hey ho..I must be getting old.

Answer 2

I live in Florida. The reason native, white Floridians are called "crackers" has nothing to do with Ritz (or even saltines!). The word comes from the "crack" of the whip, since many native white Floridians used to be cattle ranchers. Not sure about the application of the word "Cracker" in other states, but that's the Florida take on it.

Answer 3

It doesn't offend you if you are not aware of the weight it carries as an insult.  

There are various theories concerning the origin of the term "cracker".

The term "cracker" was in use during Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the verb 'crack', meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "crack" a joke.)

By the 1760s, this term was in use by the English in the British North American colonies to refer to Scots-Irish settlers in the south. A letter to the Earl of Dartmouth reads: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode". A similar usage was that of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species, to refer to "Virginia squatters" (illegal settlers).

Spaniards in Florida called them “Quáqueros,” a corruption of the English word “Quaker,” which the Spanish used to contemptuously refer to any Protestant.

One theory claims that 'cracker' dates back to slavery in the South. The popular folk etymology is based on slaver foremen using bullwhips to discipline African American slaves, and the sound the whip being described as 'cracking the whip'. The foremen who cracked these whips were thus known as 'crackers'.

According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "cracker" is a term of contempt for the "poor whites", particularly of Georgia and Florida. Britannica notes that the term dates back to the American Revolution, and is derived from the "cracked corn" which formed their staple food.

Historically the word suggested poor, white rural Americans with little formal education.

Answer 4

Thanks for the question! I'm a 70's dude so I'm well qualified to answer this--Back in the 60s and 70s black folks called us "white soda crackers" sometimes just in fun and sometimes (just my opinion) to counter all the whites who used the "n-word".I was 12   years old in 1969 and back then I heard the word used all the time.Keep in mind that I was raised in N.C. and that it may have been used here more than other places,I really don't know. I remember wishing that black folks had a more offensive,more powerful word because it always seemed to me that cracker didnt have the same fource as the n-word.Look,you're talking to a cat who marched for civil rights between ages11 and15.One day I started really thinking about the n-word and I realized something--that I wished people would look at that word for what it really is and where it came from--it origionated  from a bunch of stupid whites who were too illiterate and/or too lazy to pronounce the word *****. Guess Ive answered your question and then some.Any way,I still pray for the day when human beings will all treat one another like brothers and sisters.                       [e-mail]